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Spoilers Pokémon UNITE

Thoughts on the announcement of Pokémon Unite?

  • Can't wait!

    Votes: 3 4.3%
  • It looks okay.

    Votes: 11 15.9%
  • Meh...

    Votes: 13 18.8%
  • Pass.

    Votes: 42 60.9%

  • Total voters
    69
Btw, the link doesn't work since the article is deleted (Seems like SCMP is getting censored).

My bad. Somehow when I linked the article, I accidentally linked it to this thread and not the article in question. Just copy and paste the link into your browser, it is still there.

 
Pokemon Unite has united the world, including uniting people in the United States of America as well as China whose relationship has soured in recent weeks (according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post- Chinese gamers hate that Tencent turned Pokémon into a MOBA game). If Pokemon Unite was to unite the world, it has done it.

Anybody wants to nominate The Pokemon Company and Tencent for an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for preventing a Second Cold War by uniting the people of both the United States of America and China against Pokemon Unite?
I changed the link so that it correctly redirects to the article. Anyways...

Judging by the article, it seems that most of the salt is just from upset people on the Internet. Time and time again have people been proven wrong that online anger accurately reflects outrage in real life. Irregardless of how many people say they think the game should "get lost" in an online forum poll (voluntary response polls like the one mentioned in the article are statistically meaningless as those with strong opinions, typically negative, are more likely to respond, skewing the results) or how skewed the like/dislike ratio is, that has no bearing on how "united" people actually are against this game.
 
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I think the idea of a Pokemon MOBA should have been done years ago and am glad that the TPCi are trying more and more throughout the years to expand into different genres for spinoffs. I am extremely disappointed that Tencent is involved due to their various human rights violations then again they announced that they partnered with Tencent a year ago so this shouldn't be news to us. Still is very disappointing though I am skeptical about whether this outrage is genuinely about how shitty Tencent is and not because of disappointment. This announcement was definitely given special attention because Tencent requested it. The game itself is not my cup of tea but I do hope that MOBA fans get something that they can enjoy when the game releases. I know this game was definitely made with the South East Asian market in mind which is huge in both mobile games and MOBAs so it'll probably see a huge success.

As for the outrage IMO I think it's unwarranted because this was all due to the fans hyping themselves up over pure hearsay and speculation off of some plushies. I understand that people would love for another mainline game but at the same time this is the same fanbase that says Gamefreak should take longer on developing games yet turns around and asks for a new mainline game less than a year after the last one was released. I'm personally happy they didn't announce a new game yet. They are giving the Crown Tundra it's much-deserved hype build-up and aren't pressuring the dev team with both internal and external expectations of a mainline game just yet.

Overall, I think the game is a unique good idea in concept while not being my cup of tea. The involvement of Tencent is extremely disappointing but shouldn't be a surprise since it's been public knowledge for over a year and Nintendo themselves has been implicated in profiting off of child and slave labor showing that this isn't beneath them. The outrage is overblown and this fandom constantly whips themselves up into a frenzy off of rumors and hearsay and then gets disappointed when the reality is not meeting their imaginations.
 
For those that don't know what Tencent is, its company that manages Film, Insurance, Advertising, Shopping, Video Games, Virtual Pay, Medicine to name a few. In other words, its monopoly in China on pretty much everything. The company has hit 500 Billion dollar mark, putting on par with Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and being the first Asian Company to do so.

Its influence doesn't solely exist in China though, let's talk about video games, this Tencent's monopoly on the video game industry; in fact, it is the largest video game company in the world:

This is from wikipedia by the way. Anyway, this is huge. So what's the problem? Well Tencent has had a strong history of selling personal information to Chinese Communist party, a party infamous for its Human Rights violations. Supporting the Communist parties also translates to fighting against Hong Kong's Independence, enough said about that. And there's also the issue of a lot of Tencent's apps being ripoffs with just different names, lot of companies have called out Tencent for being stealing their ideas. Pokemon Unite fits into the category- it literally looks like League of Legends but with Pokemon Characters. In fact, my father told me that the reason his company does not have a branch in China and Hong Kong out of concern of their IP being copied/absorbed by Tencent. So why do companies like Tesla and Snapchat invest in Tencent? Well, its the easiest way to get into the Chinese market.

So what does this have to do with The Pokemon Company? 2 major concerns come to mind.

1. The political stance on The Pokemon Company will change in a negative way. Going back to the time Blizzard stripped an esport champion for supporting the Hong Kong protests, the almost certainly-real reason why Blizzard stripped the title was because they did not want to sabotage their relationship with Tencent. Now imagine if a Play!Pokemon champion supported the Hong Kong protests and the Unite was a success. There would be a very good chance that the TPC would strip the title to ensure the relationship with Tencent would remain stable, causing a huge backlash similar to the Blizzard Incident, but the more obvious red flag that the TPC effectively supports the Chinese Communist Party, and opposes Hong Kong.

2. Games like Fortnite and Clash of Clans have had history of children spending too much money trying to get the best in-app purchases to the point that families have gone broke. I would never suspect a Pokemon game to have the potential for huge money loss. Based on the current gameplay of Unite, I imagine that the micro transactions will be similar to LoL mostly cosmetic but with some experience gain to make it faster as well as new characters to play as, which doesn't seem too bad at first until you realize that in a competitive game, you want to save as much time grinding and straight to competitive battles, AKA spending tons of money to save time.

Here's a brief summary of Tencent's influence:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5yFhJFqw5w&lc=z23xejzpdluqtzb5504t1aokgcebzpf2xyll4ngwg2xerk0h00410.1593140805217863
 
Hyping up and expectations from one of the biggest video game franchises is a big difference.
The fans definitely hyped themselves up into thinking it was Sinnoh remakes or Let's Go Johto despite there being evidence of other games in the pipeline that hadn't been shown yet. I.e. Pokemon Unite (The Tencent collaboration was public knowledge for over a year) or even Detective Pikachu 2 or Pokemon Sleep. The fans hear big announcement and tunnel vision into thinking it must be a mainline game when that was never promised.
 
The fans definitely hyped themselves up into thinking it was Sinnoh remakes or Let's Go Johto despite there being evidence of other games in the pipeline that hadn't been shown yet. I.e. Pokemon Unite (The Tencent collaboration was public knowledge for over a year) or even Detective Pikachu 2 or Pokemon Sleep. The fans hear big announcement and tunnel vision into thinking it must be a mainline game when that was never promised.
I think the problem is that TPC doesn't really know/understand his audience quite enough. There's no way you call something "a big project", you dedicate to it an entire separated presentation and then you just reveal a Moba. The problem is not the game itself, the problem is how the game was presented. It's been 3 years that they keep failing on the presentation/marketing of their games. Just think about how all the dexit revolution could have easly been avoided back in June by saying "Guys there'll be DLCs and more pokemon will be added" when they were already working on them, instead of saying that they would have never added more pokemon.
If Snap was announced this Wednesday, everyone would have been happy even if that was just a spin off. The same, I think, can be said for another Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum/Pokken/Ranger. The point is not that the game they announced was not a mainline game, the problem is that people felt fooled, hyped for a game that nobody asked for and that is tecnically and visually nothing better than similar games that come out years ago.
The problem is that Unite didn't need its own presentation or it didn't need to be announced as a "big project" but could have simply be announced as a new project. Among the games they announced, Snap is the only groundbreaking game for the fans that could have deserved its own presentation. But after almost 30 years TPC seems to still really don't understand what pokemon fans like and want. For the fans "a big project" is a mainline game. I don't think we can accuse anyone for hyping up, when the president of TPC announce "a big project" with its own presentation.
 
I think the problem is that TPC doesn't really know/understand his audience quite enough. There's no way you call something "a big project", you dedicate to it an entire separated presentation and then you just reveal a Moba. The problem is not the game itself, the problem is how the game was presented. It's been 3 years that they keep failing on the presentation/marketing of their games. Just think about how all the dexit revolution could have easly been avoided back in June by saying "Guys there'll be DLCs and more pokemon will be added" when they were already working on them, instead of saying that they would have never added more pokemon.
If Snap was announced this Wednesday, everyone would have been happy even if that was just a spin off. The same, I think, can be said for another Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum/Pokken/Ranger. The point is not that the game they announced was not a mainline game, the problem is that people felt fooled, hyped for a game that nobody asked for and that is tecnically and visually nothing better than similar games that come out years ago.
The problem is that Unite didn't need its own presentation or it didn't need to be announced as a "big project" but could have simply be announced as a new project. Among the games they announced, Snap is the only groundbreaking game for the fans that could have deserved its own presentation. But after almost 30 years TPC seems to still really don't understand what pokemon fans like and want. For the fans "a big project" is a mainline game. I don't think we can accuse anyone for hyping up, when the president of TPC announce "a big project" with its own presentation.

TBH, if they announced Dexit and said DLC will add more Pokemon, that would have given them flak as well, cuz then people are gonna say: They only have dexit to let us pay for the remaining Pokemon.
 
Which isn't quite wrong.

No it isn't, but with Dexit, Gamefreak couldn't do anything right, since they would have gotten flak one way or the other anyways.

Imo, Dexit was a breath of fresh air for me, especially since i could try out Pokemon i wouldn't have used otherwise (Like for example i used Unfezant one time in the game and it didn't disappoint me, which wouldn't have been the case if the other early birds were in the game like Pidgeot, Talonflame, Swellow and Staraptor).
 
TBH, if they announced Dexit and said DLC will add more Pokemon, that would have given them flak as well, cuz then people are gonna say: They only have dexit to let us pay for the remaining Pokemon.
Not at all. You don't have to buy the dlc to have the old pokemon, there's a free update that allows you to transfer them from home exactly the way it was for s/m to obtain certain old pokemon. The only dlc limited pokemon is urshifu, which is a new pokemon and not an old one (like all the other pokemon exclusive to dlcs) and it's the exact same scenario of being forced to buy usum to have ultra necrozma, blacephalon and stakataka but at a fewer price. Let's be honest, Game Freak did the right thing on this aspect. So they could have easly announced that a free update would have allowed more old pokemon in the games in the future (which is exactly what happened).
 
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No it isn't, but with Dexit, Gamefreak couldn't do anything right, since they would have gotten flak one way or the other anyways.

Imo, Dexit was a breath of fresh air for me, especially since i could try out Pokemon i wouldn't have used otherwise (Like for example i used Unfezant one time in the game and it didn't disappoint me, which wouldn't have been the case if the other early birds were in the game like Pidgeot, Talonflame, Swellow and Staraptor).
They could still programed the talonflame, swellow, staraptor to the game and shouldn't add them to the galar dex. Dexit didn't make you use new Pokemon, better arranged regional dex did.
 
They could still programed the talonflame, swellow, staraptor to the game and shouldn't add them to the galar dex. Dexit didn't make you use new Pokemon, better arranged regional dex did.

Considering we see Poliwag on a shirt and the Fletchling windvain, they willingy took out the lines from the base game to put them in the DLC (That much is obvious). I personally wonder if Leon would had a Talonflame on his team before G-Max Charizard existed, because of that windvain.
 
Considering we see Poliwag on a shirt and the Fletchling windvain, they willingy took out the lines from the base game to put them in the DLC (That much is obvious). I personally wonder if Leon would had a Talonflame on his team before G-Max Charizard existed, because of that windvain.
This logic is quite a bit of a stretch. You could purchase Girafarig, Beedrill, and Cherrim themed clothing in Gen 7 despite none of those lines being available. Klara has a Dustox themed headband, despite it not being available. That doesn’t automatically mean they retroactively removed them.
 
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This logic is quite a bit of a stretch. You could purchase Gurafarig, Beedrill, and Cherrim themed clothing in Gen 7 despite none of those lines being available. Klara has a Dustox themed headband, despite it not being available. That doesn’t automatically mean they retroactively removed them.

There was also that Bellossom facestand in the tourist shops, plus the plant vases in the Hano Grand Resort that resembled Oddish (which an NPC explicitly mentioned). And Swirlix in the Thrifty Megamart, and Slurpuff as the mascot for the malasada joints - also commented on by an NPC in USUM, saying it'd make more sense for the mascot to be a Pokémon like her Pyukumuku since it actually lives in Alola.

In the Isle of Armor, Honey uses the phrase "lucky Ducklett" despite Ducklett not being part of the Isle Dex. Some of the curry ingredients also reference species that weren't part of the Galar Dex.

I think, just because the Pokémon aren't in the game, doesn't mean that the producers are going to start acting like they don't exist in the wider world.
 
Let me break this down piece by piece.

I think the problem is that TPC doesn't really know/understand his audience quite enough. There's no way you call something "a big project", you dedicate to it an entire separated presentation and then you just reveal a Moba. The problem is not the game itself, the problem is how the game was presented. It's been 3 years that they keep failing on the presentation/marketing of their games.

First of all the TPCi know their audience very well. Their audience is young children and pre-teens. Not late adolescents and young adults like us. We are not the target audience anymore therefore our wants are secondary compared to the primary audience. It's this assumption that we are still within the primary audience that leads to certain aspects of disappointments.

Just think about how all the Dexit revolution could have easily been avoided back in June by saying "Guys there'll be DLCs and more pokemon will be added" when they were already working on them, instead of saying that they would have never added more pokemon.

What they said was that moving forward that ALL Pokemon will not available within the same game moving forward. Even counting the DLC ALL Pokemon would still not be available so that would be a blatant lie. Also, they didn't say that they would add more Pokemon with the DLC because technically that announcement would lead many to believe that old Pokemon are locked behind the DLC paywall which is technically not true since if you have a previous game and Pokemon Home you can get the old Pokemon without buying the DLC. It makes sense why they didn't announce that because it explicitly alienates fans instead of implicitly which in business terms is a very important distinction.

If Snap was announced this Wednesday, everyone would have been happy even if that was just a spin-off. The same, I think, can be said for another Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum/Pokken/Ranger. The point is not that the game they announced was not a mainline game, the problem is that people felt fooled, hyped for a game that nobody asked for and that is technically and visually nothing better than similar games that come out years ago.

The fact of the matter is that TPCi is always going to advertise their new games as big projects! They will never downplay their own products. That's like marketing 101. Always be confident when presenting a new project. The fans hyped themselves into assuming a new mainline game was coming despite no evidence of that happening and there being evidence of at least 3 spin-off projects that could be announced. The fans tunnel-visioned into seeing a new mainline game and that's entirely on them, not TPCi. You say that if any other spin-off was announced people would be satisfied but considering how when USUM was announced instead of a Switch game despite there being no evidence of a Switch game in the works at the time the fans threw a shitfest I'm inclined to believe that if anything less than Sinnoh remakes or Let's Go Johto would have seen outrage. When the fans tunnel vision on an idea they hype it up to high heavens and then rage when their unwarranted imaginative speculation doesn't coincide with reality.

The problem is that Unite didn't need its own presentation or it didn't need to be announced as a "big project" but could have simply be announced as a new project. Among the games they announced, Snap is the only groundbreaking game for the fans that could have deserved its own presentation. But after almost 30 years TPC seems to still really don't understand what pokemon fans like and want. For the fans "a big project" is a mainline game. I don't think we can accuse anyone of hyping up when the president of TPC announces "a big project" with its own presentation.

Did Unite need its own separate presentation? Probably not but Tencent most likely wanted their own presentation and considering the metric fuckton of money they probably are bringing the TPCi it was not a hard decision to make. Snap deserving it's own presentation is entirely subjective and is only deemed worthy due to older fans having nostalgia for it. TPCi makes gangbusters on anything Pokemon related and has been succeeding for 30 years. They know damn well what Pokemon fans like and want. They just aren't catering to you or people in our demographic. Online outrage is minuscule compared to the real tangible success they see from their total fanbase. For SOME fans a big project is a mainline game but that line of thinking is limiting and is in no way warranted at all. TPCi didn't promise a mainline game and anyone thinking they did is just wrong. For TPCi anything they produce is a big project and it would be shooting themselves in the foot if they publicly went out and said that Unite wasn't. It is entirely the fans' fault for hyping up this presentation and it is still their fault for acting like TPCi should cater to their wants and desires when:
A. it may not be financially worth it
B. THEY AREN'T EVEN THE TARGET AUDIENCE.
 
Did Unite need its own separate presentation? Probably not but Tencent most likely wanted their own presentation and considering the metric fuckton of money they probably are bringing the TPCi it was not a hard decision to make. Snap deserving it's own presentation is entirely subjective and is only deemed worthy due to older fans having nostalgia for it. TPCi makes gangbusters on anything Pokemon related and has been succeeding for 30 years. They know damn well what Pokemon fans like and want. They just aren't catering to you or people in our demographic. Online outrage is minuscule compared to the real tangible success they see from their total fanbase. For SOME fans a big project is a mainline game but that line of thinking is limiting and is in no way warranted at all. TPCi didn't promise a mainline game and anyone thinking they did is just wrong. For TPCi anything they produce is a big project and it would be shooting themselves in the foot if they publicly went out and said that Unite wasn't. It is entirely the fans' fault for hyping up this presentation and it is still their fault for acting like TPCi should cater to their wants and desires when:
Apparently Tencent's contract does not permit their games being showed off alongside other games, hence why a separate presentation.
 
Let me break this down piece by piece.



First of all the TPCi know their audience very well. Their audience is young children and pre-teens. Not late adolescents and young adults like us. We are not the target audience anymore therefore our wants are secondary compared to the primary audience. It's this assumption that we are still within the primary audience that leads to certain aspects of disappointments.



What they said was that moving forward that ALL Pokemon will not available within the same game moving forward. Even counting the DLC ALL Pokemon would still not be available so that would be a blatant lie. Also, they didn't say that they would add more Pokemon with the DLC because technically that announcement would lead many to believe that old Pokemon are locked behind the DLC paywall which is technically not true since if you have a previous game and Pokemon Home you can get the old Pokemon without buying the DLC. It makes sense why they didn't announce that because it explicitly alienates fans instead of implicitly which in business terms is a very important distinction.



The fact of the matter is that TPCi is always going to advertise their new games as big projects! They will never downplay their own products. That's like marketing 101. Always be confident when presenting a new project. The fans hyped themselves into assuming a new mainline game was coming despite no evidence of that happening and there being evidence of at least 3 spin-off projects that could be announced. The fans tunnel-visioned into seeing a new mainline game and that's entirely on them, not TPCi. You say that if any other spin-off was announced people would be satisfied but considering how when USUM was announced instead of a Switch game despite there being no evidence of a Switch game in the works at the time the fans threw a shitfest I'm inclined to believe that if anything less than Sinnoh remakes or Let's Go Johto would have seen outrage. When the fans tunnel vision on an idea they hype it up to high heavens and then rage when their unwarranted imaginative speculation doesn't coincide with reality.



Did Unite need its own separate presentation? Probably not but Tencent most likely wanted their own presentation and considering the metric fuckton of money they probably are bringing the TPCi it was not a hard decision to make. Snap deserving it's own presentation is entirely subjective and is only deemed worthy due to older fans having nostalgia for it. TPCi makes gangbusters on anything Pokemon related and has been succeeding for 30 years. They know damn well what Pokemon fans like and want. They just aren't catering to you or people in our demographic. Online outrage is minuscule compared to the real tangible success they see from their total fanbase. For SOME fans a big project is a mainline game but that line of thinking is limiting and is in no way warranted at all. TPCi didn't promise a mainline game and anyone thinking they did is just wrong. For TPCi anything they produce is a big project and it would be shooting themselves in the foot if they publicly went out and said that Unite wasn't. It is entirely the fans' fault for hyping up this presentation and it is still their fault for acting like TPCi should cater to their wants and desires when:
A. it may not be financially worth it
B. THEY AREN'T EVEN THE TARGET AUDIENCE.
1) Their audience is everyone, not just or primarly kids and pre-teens. The fact that they keep ignoring us doensn't mean they don't consider us their audience. Charizard has 100000 forms because they know there are fans of gen 1 who played the games in 1996 (what they don't know is that they made us hate Charizard). The problem of the games is that they try to appeal everyone and fail pleasing anyone. Sword and Shield are mainly focused on competitive. TPC knows its audience has grown up people too.
2) They litterally said they would have never made DLC for Pokemon when they were actually working on the DLCs in that exact moment. In an interview it was stated that the dlcs were not a result of the fans requests because they were already working on them. Their words not mine. And in any case they could have simply said "free update with more pokemon" which is what we got in the end. They just choosed revolution over truth.
3) The fans hyped themselves because TPC decided it was a good idea to hype them. It's a choice. With the choice comes the backlash. In the end, it was a bad choice otherwise their video wouln't have become the most disliked pokemon and nintendo video on youtube. Fact. If the past means something, they should have learned from when they announced the first switch title and then they realeased let's go games. If you hype pokemon fans, they will have expectations. Simple as it is. Just don't always blame the fans for the marketing issues of a big company. If you make a trailer saying "explore the ultramegalopolis" and then the ultramegalopolis is a corridor, you cannot blame the angry fans. It's always the same old story: pokemon fans cannot have expectations, cannot be hyped, cannot have good graphics etc because it's pokemon. Pokemon fans hype themselves easly, as a big company, they should have known/learned at this point how to manage them, if they don't --> they don't know their fans. They are the biggest franchise on planet and the fact that in the last 3 years they kept messing up with marketing is just another fact.
4) The fact that Tencent forced them to make their own presentation is probably true. It was TPC who announced it as a "big project" to the fans. "Next week we will announce a big mobile project" ---> revolution avoided, if you know your fans and you know what to say to your fans clearly.
They know damn well what Pokemon fans like and want --> I disagree. What you are not counting is that Pokemon is slowly becoming a controversial and divisive brand on Internet. From USUM till UNITE, every day there's someone new who is upset for something. If you are a big Company you know this is not good for the brand, it's like a snowball that becomes an avalanche. And pay attention, I'm not talking about the games and their quality which would need an entire deep analysis, what I'm saying is that they are forgetting how to talk to their fans. Pokemon fans may not care about Unite, maybe someone will. The problem here is that this game, alone, could have had a totally different destiny than the one it got, because in the end, it makes sense financially.
Two videos in a year with 90k dislikes or more (Unite has 150k+ right now, or 200k if we consider the 50k thousands that misteriously disappeared)---> you are not comunicating the right way your products.
 
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I really hope the roster for Unite is much larger, or more diverse generation wise, at launch than what is currently shown. I'm pretty meh on most of the Pokemon, even the two that I would most likely use, Talonflame and Blastoise. I'm wishing that we'll see some lesser known Pokemon get a chance to shine, but given that the current roster is basically fan service ahoy, I doubt it we'll see more than one or two less popular 'mons.
 
Please note: The thread is from 3 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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